Biggs seeks review of sentence

The train robber Ronnie Biggs yesterday launched a high court bid to win his freedom on compassionate grounds.

Lawyers for the 75-year-old, who cannot speak and has to be fed through a tube, lodged documents with the high court in London seeking permission to apply for judicial review of his sentence.

Biggs is serving the remaining 27 years of a 30-year sentence imposed in 1964 - but interrupted after 15 months when he escaped from Wandsworth prison - for his part in the raid on the Glasgow-to-London mail train.

He returned to Britain in May 2001 after being partially paralysed by strokes. He has been in the hospital wing of Belmarsh jail ever since.

His solicitors have made a series of attempts to transfer him to a lower security prison.